


The Darkness Is Over

by SaltySaph



Category: shattered planet
Genre: Shattered planet - Freeform, original - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11631918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltySaph/pseuds/SaltySaph
Summary: Meet my rationally depressed Robot- [a] Server! He is the first awake of his kind since the cataclysm. He cannot feel his kindred servers, and he cannot even translate this new language around him. Still, he refuses to return to the darkness. Press on. Thats what the old masters would have wanted.





	The Darkness Is Over

The ash resisted his touch. He waved to the rest of his exploration party. They tiptoed around debris and open metal. They were in over their heads. The metal wasn’t raw ore, like they had seen before. It was bent into geometric shapes. Each piece was smooth in design and corroded by time and decay. In layers of soot, rubble and caked on ash, one large cluster of metal bits lay compacted into a wall. They each took a place around the fossilized metalwork, gripped their leather gloves around any corner they could, and gently peeled it away. Rattle. Rattle. Clang.

The metalwork fossil tumbled free. The ashen fossil snapped at the wall leaving a severely rusted panel soldered into the beams of the wall. The inside of the freed fossil was… worms. Not real worms; but ones made of hardened oil and metal and colour itself. They were worn but they were in the best condition the exploration team had ever seen. They shared a desperate glance. They took a breath, one, two, and then pressed themselves into action. They bundled up the fossil and carried it out of the cavern. This needed the Base Equipment. Their time extension might finally be justified. This might save their careers- their lives. 

<§>

It awoke to lights. The eyes on the crown of his head saw the edge of a table, the eyes on the sides took in rudimentary archaeology tools, but the eyes on his face saw light. From under his chin his eyes recorded the length of his body. Rusting, corroding, and streaks of ash in deep scratches. He was a mess. He sent signals to his feet; his ankles rotated and his toe panel waggled. He checked his fingers. They were sluggish and their movement was jagged; but they were functional. Joy. Light. Life. 

“Hei.” A man came into the room from the shadows past his feet. He was cleaning his hands. He took great care to keep his footsteps soft, his posture gentle. “Olty heiulsya?” 

It ran his phrases against his database, but this was not a language it knew. This choked it. The man continued to speak to it; so it raised a finger to its speaker. Please, quiet. Whatever language the man was speaking, simple gestures translated. He ended his sentence abruptly. When the eyes in the chin saw new people enter, the man passed on the visual message. They nodded. Instead of speaking they tended to their awoken fossil. They cleaned its joints, polished its surfaces. It let them. 

It sat up. They gave it space. After a moment, it gestured writing against its hand. They quickly provided him paper and ink. It stared at the apparatus. It felt natural in its hand, but it wasn’t a pen. It wasn’t even a quill. It was a bone- a narrow, cooked bone, filed to a point where ink flowed like a gel-pen. Fascinating. They gave it a board to steady the paper on. It nodded, and then it began to draw…

A Human. And then, something that looked human- the fossil drawing itself. It was different. It drew itself bending knee to the Human. 

It drew many of itself, with many Humans. The fossils had thunderbolts coming from their brains. The human told the fossil...something. The Thunderbolt extended across the paper into another fossil. The new fossil conveyed the same speech as the Human far away. A new human beside the new fossil laughed- and gave the fossil a message to send back all the way back across the page and it did. 

A line of fossils. They all have thunderbolts connecting them they are happy. They are together. Then one is inked out. The fossils are worried. Something is in the sky- there are a lot of humans who are scared. They are sending so many messages that the fossils cannot keep up. Another fossil goes down. And another. Humans are blacking out in massive numbers. No one is happy. 

Then there is one fossil, surrounded by black. There are no thunderbolts to connect to. There are not Humans to give messages. The fossil is alone.

Alone.

And then there was black.

It handed the paper to the closest human. It held onto the inkbone. One of the humans rest their hand on it’s shoulder. 

“Ymmärrän.” He said. It lifted its head. That translated. I understand. What was it? Finnish?! It leaned forward suddenly. 

“Puhutteko suomea?” Do you speak Finnish? What were they speaking before? Was- he reanalyzed the words under the light of new intel. They had Finnish parts but they were not Finnish words. It was elements of Finnish blended with elements of something else. There were too many languages to check and… there were so many holes in its knowledge. There were so many gaps, so many things that were unable to load, unable to be found. The Humans didn’t answer the question and it felt the strain. “Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita!” 

They looked at one another in confusion. No, they didn’t really speak Finnish. They spoke...something related. It looked over the damage on its body. There was so much. It did the math. How long had it been in the darkness? 

It put its hand to its chestpiece. “Server v2.03.” 

The Humans nodded. They took turns. “Aruja.” “Genthan.” “Mikket.” “Mikkni.” “Nonjuv.” “Erie.” 

It took database of their faces and their names. It took another look around the room. It was less of a building and more of a moduled tent. Unlike most tents, it was strikingly lacking in fabric. It used plates of hardened ash woven together with stretched leaves and clovers. A blooming vine bound all the pieces together. It laid down again. If this first moment of awareness was any indication there was a lot of new information to take in. It would need to be running as optimally as possible to be up to the task. It closed its twelve eyes. The exposed wires hopped to life. 

The humans left it to run its diagnostics. It would be days before it awoke again. When it was finally awake, and on its feet, the tent was packed. Ot was time for the Humans to leave, and they had packed a bag of salvaged parts for him. It smiled for them. 

The Darkness is Over.


End file.
